Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Food Security
Food Security
and pulses are the good sources for nutritional values and calories. The per capita consumption of edible oils is 13 kgs per year (1.08kgs per month) but it is still less than what nutritionists recommend and lower than world average of 16 kgs. Each household needs 5kgs of edible oil for the nutritional values. The per capita availability of pulses is around 15 kg a year (1.25kgs per month), far below the nutritionists' recommendation of 20 kg per capita. So each family requires 6 kgs of pulses. The Government is implementing several food schemes to provide the supplementary nutrition values among the people i.e. Mid day meals in schools, anganwadi, Nutrition programme for adolescent girls. All these schemes are meant for children, adolescents, pregnant women and lactating women. But, the working class poor people are still in calorie deficient and they definitely need the nutrients to get strength, endurance and productivity at their workplace. As I fell, the comprehensive food security means nutritional security. The edible oil and pulses are essential for human beings to sustain proteins, vitamins and minerals. Inclusion of the both of them with food grains list under PDS is good for unconditional food security or else the hunger will be perennial. The public distribution systems is not functioning efficiently, its all corrupted and controlled by the politicians. The PDS food ration is going to the black markets instead of welfare of poor. Ration cards are the main documents to avail the PDS ration, there is a lot of corruption in issuing ration cards. Take this serious example of Andhra Pradesh as per Chief Ministers statement, 2.04 crores of white ration cards were issued to the BPL families. The average family size in Andhra Pradesh is 3.9 per sons. So the Andhra Pradesh has (2.04 crore families * 3.9 per sons) 7.96 crores of people who are in below poverty line out of 8.0 crores of total population. Is it Andhra Pradesh completely in below Poverty line??????? Thats how the corruption in issuing ration cards to ineligible people. Simply distributing the food grains with subsidized prices is not going to be end of the hunger. The Government has to focus on production, procuring, preserving and proper distribution of food grains. As everybody knows that the Supreme Court intervention on millions of tonnes food grain wastage due to
insufficient storage facilities, the judicial body recommended the government to distribute the starving people instead of letting rotten. The government has to concentrate on food grains storage facilities, infrastructure and supply chain. Food security act will not only serving the poor but also encourages the production of food grains which is direct benefit to the farmers since the consumption pattern is going to be more. India needs to be self sufficient in food grain production to meet this new demand by utilizing the science and technology.However, we welcome the food security bill and wish this legislation is going to fill the empty stomachs of starved poor.